If this was Gary Cahill's final act in a Bolton Wanderers shirt, and Owen Coyle gave no indication it will not be, he left a precious parting gift. The coveted defender cast aside doubt over his future to lift his current club off the foot of the Premier League with a deserved late winner over a windswept and woeful Everton.

Whatever money Chelsea or perhaps the watching Harry Redknapp pay for Cahill, it cannot come close to matching his value towards Bolton's prospects of survival.

Until 12 minutes from time, when Cahill angled Chris Eagles' reverse pass into the far corner of the Everton net, the night belonged to Tim Howard as he joined the exclusive band of goalkeepers to score from their own half. Hopes of an increased American threat at Goodison Park had centred on the returning Landon Donovan but it was the USA goalkeeper who provided the breakthrough when his clearance from a Sylvain Distin back-pass sailed over the Bolton defence, bounced and caught on the breeze, then sailed over the goalkeeper Adam Bogdan.

Adhering to the goalkeepers' union rules, Howard refused to celebrate. "I feel for him. I have been beaten by a goalkeeper before and it is quite awful," he said. By the end, with his side third from bottom and a point behind QPR, only Owen Coyle and his players had reason to.

"There's no doubt that was one of the freakiest goals I've ever seen in football," the Bolton manager said. "I feared the bad luck we had in 2011 had carried over into 2012 but I thought we would come back because of the way we were playing. It would have been easy to feel sorry for ourselves but the players showed real belief." None more so than the England defender, who could become a Chelsea player within days, providing personal terms are agreed.

Cahill was commanding in his natural habitat and decisive in attack but, despite the precariousness of Bolton's league position and the slender resources available to Coyle, the Scot will not stand in the way of a possible lucrative move for a player who is out of contract in the summer. "It is what it is," Coyle said. "If Gary goes, I will wish him nothing but the best and we will go from there," Coyle said. "He was magnificent. Quite apart from the football aspect, you have to admire his attitude when you have got a club of Chelsea's stature after him. To be fair to Chelsea, they have not tried to press us. They knew we had a massive game this week. It may happen in the next few days but there is a lot of interest in Gary."

That Howard provided Everton's greatest threat all night once again highlighted the deficiencies in David Moyes' ranks. The Everton manager continues to place his trust in Louis Saha and continues to be let down by the striker, though Moyes is hardly blessed with alternatives and the Frenchman was not alone in his inability to adapt to the wild conditions. Bolton's players showed few such problems.

Donovan, back for a second loan spell from LA Galaxy, provided Everton's only attacking impetus and the home side would have been as fortunate as Howard had been to bank all three points.

With Goodison still reverberating from his goal, however, the former Liverpool striker David Ngog ended a fine team move with a polished finish. Everton lost Phil Jagielka to a medial knee ligament injury, then the substitute Jack Rodwell within 18 minutes of his arrival, and then saw Leighton Baines strike the bar in stoppage time from a free-kick. But there were no complaints. "We cannot perform like that and expect to win," Moyes said.